Using Google Lens to translate games

[SpcDaicon]

Hello all!

After giving some thought I finally accepted the fact that many games I want to play will never have a fan translation. They are too niche or too much of a hassle to even bother translating.

Since I don't even know a lick of japanese, I got the idea of using Google Lens to live translate games while I play them. Thing is, is this even feasible? Will I have to hold my joystic in one hand and my smarthphone on the other? Is there a way to translate directly from my screen?

Has anyone even tried to play like this?

 

[Graw]

I don't know exactly how Google lens works but I tried using an android app that translates the words on my screen in real time. If such a thing for Google lens that translates whatever you see in real time exists then it should work. The machine translation might not be very good though. I tried it with one of the dragon quest games and the results were pretty mixed. Dialog was alright but menus and stuff were pretty bad. Google translate is a lot worse than most ai machine translations as well. You may be limited to Google translate.

Edit: I just realized you're talking about Google lens and not those glasses things Google had a while ago. That sounds like a pretty lousy way to do it.

 

[meowsamune]

I don't think it is? As in i don't think you are gonna enjoy playing it very much that way and also we know the quality of google translate lol...

As someone currently studying jp i recommend google lens to search characters you don't recognize. That's the most i can say.

 

[psvitaforever]

Just try :) If you really want to play certain games and learning Japanese is not a thing, you may as well try the method you suggest. After a few hours you'll decide if it's worth it, but maybe it would be best used on visual novel, because on other games it sounds difficult!

 

[OpossumQueen]

Just get a lil phone tripod and it works ok. It's definitely a hassle to get it to translate each line and sometimes it takes a couple tries, but I've been playing through Devil Summoner this way--I CAN read a decent bit of Japanese and being able to occasionally know what they're getting at when google lens gets it wrong is definitely a big help, but it can get you through a game (especially if you also have something like a translated script or letsplay that you can reference)

 

[HextarVigar]

I'm not going to trust anything from Google.

 

[Clippy]

Maybe this could help?
https://github.com/Artikash/Textractor

 

[bjork]

I've used it for phone game menus, just to learn the navigation. But for something story intense, I don't think I'd have the patience, heh.

 

[Faust03]

I don't trust google for anything whatsoever.. There's probably better translators out there

 

[KirboDeku]

Sounds like a pain to constantly do this just to play some games... At this point, you might as well learn Japanese.

 

[beefbowl]

Learn Japanese, its easier than doing this

 

[DanCalibur]

Retrobat has a built in AI Translation Service, this is how you config it: https://wiki.retrobat.org/advanced-features/ai-translation-service

You press select+R1 and it translate the screen

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24]

There’s a variety of methods! I’d say to use some other, more niche translation resource, as it might be more useful for specific things like this. Google, on top of being insane spyware, is designed for a broad audience, and so its’ machine translation is built with the most common denominator in mind.

I’m sure that this idea has come to other people before so take a look around online! I’m sure something out there exists for this!

 

[hazys]

It's basically the same as translating a game by holding up your phone to the screen with a translation app open. If you have no other options, it can be a decent workaround for games that aren't text-intensive. For something like a visual novel or JRPG, it's not really a comfortable or reasonable way to get through the whole game. And obviously the translation's quality is a total crap shoot.

I know, for example, that people have used a similar method to live-translate the online version of Dragon Quest X, and it works decently enough. I think it depends on whether you care about "simply understanding the game enough to play it" or whether you really want to experience the story.